I Cogitate

THE WHITE HOUSE VS. THE MEDIA: IT'S WAR

THE SECRETS-OBSESSED NIXON HAD IT IN FOR THE PRESS. SO DOES THE SECRETIVE BUSH ADMINISTRATION. BUT THIS TIME, THE BATTLE IS WORSE.

By Clark Hoyt
June 4, 2006

Not since Vietnam and Watergate have relations between the press and those in power in Washington been as strained as they are now.

This is the age when the White House treats the press as though it were just another interest group -- a hostile one with no particular role in our democracy.

When the Bush administration was still riding high in January of 2004, Andy Card, then the White House chief of staff, said of the press to the New Yorker's Ken Auletta, ``They don't represent the public any more than other people do. . . . I don't believe you have a check-and-balance function.''

The Nixon administration -- fighting its own unpopular war and obsessed with secrecy -- also lashed out furiously at the press, placing journalists on its famous ``enemies'' list. We were ``nattering nabobs of negativism,'' according to former Vice President Spiro Agnew, who was eventually forced to resign in disgrace for accepting cash bribes.

Today, the Bush administration has gone so far as to threaten possible criminal prosecution against New York Times' reporters for revealing that the government was engaging in warrantless wiretapping in its war on terror.

And while the administration's moves have echoes of the past, mainstream news organizations are dealing with that pressure in a very different climate from the 1970s. They are weakened by economic pressures radically transforming the media landscape and by falling public trust fed by relentless attacks from right and left and well-publicized failures to adhere to high ethical standards.

One of the best examples of the clash between the White House and the press is over the war in Iraq. Are things going badly there? Not really, the administration and its partisans say. If the public believes Iraq is a mess, it's the media's fault for reporting all that bad news about improvised bombs, death squads and beheaded bodies in the streets. Why doesn't the press instead focus on the many schools that have been rebuilt or the new power plants and health clinics?

It's true that there is good news coming out of Iraq, including the daily heroism and idealism of many American servicemen and -women and many Iraqis. But the real story, the big story, the one to which journalists properly gravitate, is the stubborn insurgency and sectarian violence that kills people daily and threatens the stability of the entire country and even the region.

To deny its gravity and to complain that the media aren't reporting the good news is, to me, somewhat like admiring the new draperies in a house that's on fire. They're nice, but they aren't the story.

While the press has continued reporting the bad news from Iraq in the face of criticism, on some other stories, reporters have retreated to a split-the-difference journalism intended to offend no one. This person said this. Her polar opposite said that. We'll quote them both equally. You, the reader, can make up your own mind about who's telling the truth, because we're not going to make any attempt to reconcile either statement with objective facts for fear of offending someone.

This is not responsible journalism...

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